Glasurit makes all their aftermarket paint (repair paint) for BMW approved repair centres worldwide. ( Standox/Spies Hecker are approved, but not the official line)

Standox (currently a Dupont company) makes paint for many of their factories.

The South African 3 Series factory (70% of which cars go to the USA) gets its waterbased paint from the local Dupont joint venture using Standox Technology
(Same factory makes the factory paint for the local Mercedes C Class factory )

Standox made all the paint for the BMW F1 team

Remember there is a large difference between factory paint and aftermarket paint repair shops use.

I cant understand how we are on M3 post and your bashing the OP. Id expect it in e90post but come on? the man has a valid point.

Having a white m3, i notice the chips and indentations on my car all the time. I am one of the most anal people you will meet when it comes to my cars. My 2 other e90s can get scratched, dented, and dinged and it doesnt affect me. But DONT FUCK with a mans M3. That being said, I fully agree with the OP, this paint is far too fragile! I look at E39's and E46's that are almost 10 years old and their paint still looks far more in tact than an E90 born in 06.

The paint on the older models just held up much better, and i refuse to believe anyone can not agree with it. Sure its something small like paint, but for those who intend on keeping their cars for many years or even life its kind of dissapointing to have this to deal with. The amount of rock chips on my car drives me up a wall. I dont drive behind trucks, I dont drive through debris, and the indentations dont really cut all the way to the paint, it just damages the clearcoat.

Fuck, is a little more paint THAT much to ask for?

you have a white m3 and you notice all the chips? please guy, it's not bad on light colored cars.

It is more noticeable on black etc.

If you dont like chips, stay your ass off the highway, very simple.
Or drive 30mph.

The paint will last, you guys are over-reacting, take care of it.

How often do you guys see cases of OE clearcoat peeling, delaminating etc.?

Anyone test the paint on a 2008 car? Just wondering if this is only on the newer cars?

__________________

Let me get this straight... You are swapping out parts designed by some of the top engineers in the world because some guys sponsored by a company told you it's "better??" But when you ask the same guy about tracking, "oh no, I have a kid now" or "I just detailed my car." or "i just got new tires."

The irony of someone commenting on another person having too much free time seemed to have escaped you.

Quote:

Originally Posted by username11

My Alpine White M3 has the most durable finish, far and away, of any car I have ever owned. I have driven through hails of rocks from truckers which would leave my Silver Gray 330CI ZHP pitted all over (every time I washed the car I would find too many tiny new dings/chips to count) and the M3 has yet to show a single rock chip or mark in 8000 miles despite being my DD and highway driven every work day.

So 8000 miles of "hails of rocks" and you have zero chips on your 4.5 mils paint M3, OK, sure.

Basically it is the school of thought of people who think that in order to respray a front bumper you must:

- Remove every part from the car including headlights and the engine
- Apply 500 miles of blue masking tape
- Respray the entire car in order to "blend" the inherently non-matching paint on the plastic bumper with the rest of the car
- Build own clean room in garage because commercial paint shops are "too dirty"
- While you're at it might as well "shave the door handles" and add a poorly fitting CSL-style trunk.
- Post numerous HDR pictures on the internet of the process after spending ten hours in Photoshop.

What's ultramate? What's Pathways?

You know what's funny about car forums? People who have no idea about certain topic spouting off like they know something about it.

A proper respray in a shop that can properly match color without blending adjacent panel is incredibly expensive.

Why?

Because if you re-use the current panels, there is no way to strip the paint without also stripping the ecoat, which is not to be confused with the primer.

So, you start out with an imperfectly cleansed piece of metal, and you wonder how well the end result is going to look like.

Did I mention that most shops don't even positively and negatively charge the paint and the panel for better adhesion like they do in the factory?

Or that even a really good painter can't do factory thickness, so in this day of cheap and widely available paint meters, people are going to right away classify your car as a story car the second the paint meter hits the painted surface of your car.

And then, you have to break the paint on all the bolted parts on the hood, the fenders, which would mean that somehow you have to find someone good enough to redo that so you don't have obviously worked on bolted right under your hood or in the door hinge well.

As far as bumper resprays go, that's even worse. Most shops just sand down the existing paint a little, then paint it over with questionable flex additive mixture. And those little nicks and scratches? Oh, the bad ones get epoxied then sanded down, and what happens when someone lightly tapped you? Oh that's right, the whole epoxied area will crease up.

Properly refinish plastic bumpers is a big job, which is why most good shops don't bother refinishing the plastic bumpers, but get new ones.

So, all this intensive labor process adds up very quickly, especially when you are talking about removing a whole lot of panels and clean and process it as best as non factory can.

And in the end, your car is still a story car with respray that many people will simply pass over.